ON ARACHNIDA. 
459 
leaving its visiting card.” (Lescallier, Notes sur la traduct. 
Frang. du Voyage da Capitaine Stedman.) 
Pison relates that the mygale of which we have spoken a 
little farther back, sheds its hairs with age, and that then, the 
skin of its belly is of a pale carnation colour. 
Madlle. Merian informs us that she had found many in- 
dividuals of the mygale avicularia on the tree named guajave , 
there making their domicile, and remaining in ambush in the 
cocoon, which is formed by a caterpillar of the same tree, for 
its change into the form of a chrysalis. She assures us ex- 
plicitly, that this mygale does not spin long cocoons, as some 
travellers would have us to believe. The majority of the 
other testimonies which we could allege here, do not appear 
to us of great authority, either because they were not ocular, 
or because it is difficult to ascertain to what species of 
araneides they should be applied. The author of the Natural 
History of Equinoxial France, places the habitation of the 
avicularia, or that of some other species, in the clefts of rocks. 
In Stedman’s Voyage to Guyana, this animal is called the 
bush-spider, and its web is said to be of small extent, but 
strong. The mygale avicularia is provided with two long 
spinnerets ; thus there can be no doubt of its capacity for 
spinning. But when we examine the form of the hooks of its 
tarsi, when we find them so small, and almost without denti- 
culations, and thus so different from those of the industrious 
araneides, we must feel inclined to refuse to this mygale the 
faculties which the majority of the araneides possess, and to 
suppose that its strength may suffice for all the purposes of 
its existence. It lives, according to Madlle. Merian, on ants, 
which escape with difficulty from its vigilance and pursuit. 
In failure of these it endeavours to surprise small birds in 
their nests, whose blood it sucks with avidity. This change 
of nutriment is rather different, but the appetite of the animal 
is equally voracious and accommodating. The ants occa- 
